but afterwards, excusing himself on the score of an attack of ague, he invited Voltaire to come to him instead, and the first meeting accordingly took place at Wesel.
"I saw," says Voltaire, "in a small room, by the light of a candle, a little mattress, two feet and a half wide, on which lay a little man wrapped up in a dressing-gown of coarse blue stuff: this was the king, who perspired and shivered under a wretched counterpane, in a violent access of fever.
"Having paid my respects, I began the acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his first physician. The fit over, he dressed, and placed himself at table. Algarotti, Keyserling, Maupertuis, and the King's Envoy to the States-General, formed the supper-party, at which we discussed, to the very bottom, the questions of the immortality of the soul, of liberty, and of the Androgynes of Plato."
Voltaire spent three days here with the king:—
"I soon felt attached to him," he says; "the more that he was a king—always a very attractive circumstance for human weakness. In general, it is we literary people who flatter kings; but this one applauded me from top to toe, whilst the Abbé Desfontaines, and other rascals, libelled me in Paris at least once a-week."
The royal party continued its route, while Voltaire returned to Holland, whence he presently wrote to Maupertuis:—
"When we parted at Clèves, you going to the right, I to the left, I fancied myself at the last judgment, when the elect are separated from the condemned. Divus Fredericus says to you, 'Sit down at my right hand in the paradise of Berlin,' and to me, 'Depart, thou accursed, into Holland.'"
Frederick, on his side, was equally pleased with the meeting:—
